FUBAR, One Star Amazon Reviews, and Deciding to Actually Review a Book

Rant Zone: So I was curious about FUBAR a few minutes ago. Realize, I don't troll Amazon Reviews generally, but the book sold about 3000 copies a few weeks ago in a surge, so I wanted to see if any of those folks who bought it reviewed it. When last I saw, there were ten reviews. Now there are 23. Seriously? Can't it get more reviews than 23? I can poll the local nursing home and get 13 reviews from them.

Then I started reading a few of the reviews. 

I know, what was I thinking?

But I did.

The single two star review that said it 'wasn't their cup of tea' was totally fair. As was the only three star review which said that the stories were a little far fetched. It does start out with a hum-dinger of a Lovecraft story, so if you weren't expecting it, then, yeah.

But the one star reviews are another thing all together. Investigating them, I see that one of those hadn't reviewed a single thing on Amazon and decided to break their review cherry on FUBAR with a one star review. What makes someone want to review? Is this the only thing they've ever bought on Amazon? Did they buy it then get an automated note from Amazon in their inbox urging the person to review? But then doesn't that happen every time? So why now? Why this one? Why me?

The other one star review was a single word review  (awful) by someone who votes all of Severed Press's books with Five Stars. Not sure what this means. Just noteworthy. Probably random. But again, why review? At least if you review, be constructive.

Then the third one star reads like this: "I was interested in true stories of battle and sacrifice. This book of short stories is fictional, morbid, depressing, and hopeless. I read four of them and to avoid depression had to stop. I can only hope that some the images in my head fade with time." Again, someone who probably doesn't read horror regularly. I don't mind this one. I struck a cord. Mission accomplished.

My big question, is where are the other 3000 reviews that should be there. Hell, even if 10% reviewed, that would be 300 (see, ma, I can do math). Have you reviewed it? Would you?

Now back to working on a secret Grunt Life novella to appear in the upcoming SNAFU: Future Warfare so Geoff Brown will stop sending Girl Scouts who follow me around and shout at me to finish my damn story. And my story (titled Shatner Rules) better be good too, because the fabled Mike Resnick is in this book with me. I was getting advice from him on AOL before I ever wrote my first story, so I owe that fella a lot. 

Yeah. Back to work. I need to score more one star reviews.